


A Lesson, Then, For Them Both

by xsnarksthespot



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, One Shot, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1293049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xsnarksthespot/pseuds/xsnarksthespot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Porthos is four pulls from the bottle and a page into his narration before he really understands what it is that he’s reading.  If the man were capable of blushing, he might have. Instead, he stubbornly keeps reciting in that gravelly tone of his, unconsciously pitching the words into the firelit darkness of the room with a slow, careful intimacy that inspires Aramis to rest his head against the chaise with his eyes drifting shut.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lesson, Then, For Them Both

When they shuffle into the room, it’s with dissolving snow in their beards and clattering teeth, the sound of their boots dragging mud and ice over the threshold almost as loud as their laboured breathing. 

January has made its presence known with unchivalrous punch. Porthos can feel it in the marrow of his bones and grouchy surrender is his look du jour as of late. Even Aramis, normally so capable of making the best of situations with a smirk and a swagger, has a pinched expression that says he’s had quite enough of this shit, _thank you very much_.

But this is their lot, and things are far worse for those without even a roof over their heads, so complaints are kept to a grumbling minimum as Aramis moves to start a fire and Porthos lights a candle by the door.

“We don’t have to do this today,” Porthos insists, though there’s the ghost of something unspoken in the gruff timbre of his voice. 

Aramis waves a gloved hand dismissively and stokes the fire. “Don’t start. You’re not getting out of a lesson just because my dangly bits are frozen solid.” The fire flickers a warm glow across his smirking face as he shoots a particularly machiavellian look over his shoulder. “I have a special surprise for you and I’ve waited as long as I can stand as it is.”

Porthos makes a face somewhere between amused and suspicious. They’ve been doing this for years, so long that they’re not really even lessons so much anymore, just two friends enjoying each other’s company in a way that would raise eyebrows in the garrison. But, it’s theirs and it’s tradition now. 

Besides, Porthos treasures these days far more than he cares to admit.

As the heat from the fire finally steals the sharp edges out of the air, Porthos nods and shrugs out of his cloak. Aramis does the same, with a bit more show and a lazy smile. It’s clear he’s feeling better already, with a crackling fire at his back and the cold streets of Paris on the other side of a locked door. Hats, holsters, and scabbards are discarded next. Then boots. Porthos might have joked about how in sync they are if it weren’t old news by now.

Instead, he makes himself a cosy seat next to the fire out of bedclothes and a cushion, leaving spares on the floor so Aramis can use them as he sees fit. On a warm summer day, Aramis would already be down to his trousers and braces, padding barefoot around the room or sprawled across the ancient, overstuffed chaise that serves as Porthos’ “sitting room”. 

The room he rents is comfortable, but not opulent by any means. Not that he _needs_ opulent. Or could afford it on a Musketeers commission. Fair rent, a solid roof, and access to clean water suit him just fine. He gives much of his spare coin away to the poor, anyway.

“Hurry up and hand it over already,” Porthos smirks, hand outstretched and fingers beckoning. 

Aramis makes a small tutting noise and slips out of his leathers. “Patience is a virtue, my friend. And so are manners. Persist with your rudeness and I’ll be forced to give you a lesson in those too while we’re at it.”

Porthos’ laugh is a deep, rumbling sound that brings an instant grin to Aramis’ face. And a heady warmth to his heart, if he’s being honest. Which he’s not. Not at the moment, anyway. _At the moment_ , he’s settling himself down in front of the fire with his back against the edge of the chaise. He reconsiders quickly and takes the extra cushion Porthos has laid out for him, stuffing it behind him. Another minute is devoted to covering himself with the spare bedclothes and stretching his legs out in front of him. The heat of the fire beating against his wool stocking covered feet feels _sublime_.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Aramis announces, which earns him a raised eyebrow from his less than convinced friend. He digs around in the pocket of his trousers, pulling out a small stack of slightly crumpled papers folded in half. Again, Porthos reaches out. They’re sitting at opposite angles, Porthos with his back against the wall and his legs bent, feet only a few inches from Aramis’ thigh. That leaves his outstretched hand hovering over Aramis’ forearm as he abruptly pulls the papers away and shuffles through them with a wordless noise of concentration.

“Wait, wait,” Aramis stalls, even going so far as to rest the papers in his lap so he can adjust his cushion once more. As Porthos sighs and opens his mouth, a growling complaint likely not far behind, Aramis flashes a wide smile and slaps the papers onto Porthos’ palm. “There. My, my, you really are impatient. Someone might think you _thoroughly enjoy this_. _If_ someone were so inclined.”

That earns him a hmph as Porthos rolls his eyes and scoots a little closer to the fire so he can read the words scrawled across the page. Words, Porthos immediately recognises, written in a hand belonging to Aramis himself. Usually, he brings books or something written by a local in barely legible penmanship. “Better to _challenge you_ , Porthos,” he would say, no attempt made at concealing the pleasure being an ass provided him. 

But this is new. And Porthos feels his throat go inexplicably dry at the thought of reading something out loud that Aramis has written. He lifts inquiring eyes and catches the soft, but otherwise unreadable gaze staring back at him.

“Some’fin tells me I’m going to need some wine for this,” Porthos murmurs, holding the stare a bit longer than is necessary. The smirk that dances across Aramis’ mouth is accompanied by a slow blink. He turns his head, spots a bottle laying carelessly on its belly next to a side table and rolls to his hip to collect it. Uncorking it with his mouth, he hands over the offering without smirking again and thinks this is an impressive feat indeed.

Porthos is four pulls from the bottle and a page into his narration before he really understands what it is that he’s reading. If the man were capable of blushing, he might have. Instead, he stubbornly keeps reciting in that gravelly tone of his, unconsciously pitching the words into the firelit darkness of the room with a slow, careful intimacy that inspires Aramis to rest his head against the chaise with his eyes drifting shut.

“...The Comtesse arched her back beneath my...min’strations, a low, keening whimper tumbling from her perfect mouth,” Porthos reads. A tic starts up in his jaw, though he's unaware of it. “I would’ve happily silenced her with my own, if it weren’t otherwise...occupied between her thighs. We made what, I c’n only assume, was a pretty picture, her legs draped over my shoulders, her delicate feet pressin’ into my back. I felt her fingers in my hair then, a personal...weakness of mine. And one that has oft-served as a favoured instrument for judging a lover’s...gratification.” 

The lowbred inflection in Porthos’ words slips through a few times, despite his efforts to stifle it. Unsurprisingly, this fact doesn’t earn him any actual direction from Aramis. When this all started, he’d guided with a gentle, but _insistent_ hand. Even more so with writing, because he’d be damned if he taught his friend how to write and had to suffer through horrendous penmanship for all the years that followed.

This is different. And it’s painfully obvious that he’s reveling in the newness of his words in the unmistakable cadence of Porthos’ voice. At least, _he_ thinks it’s painfully obvious, with the way his hand has slipped beneath one of his braces and is flexing rhythmically into the fabric of his shirt. Not to mention the look that must be on his face - part smug, part enigmatic hunger. 

A few seconds of silence tick by and Aramis rocks his head to the side against the chaise, his eyes flickering open to level an expectant gaze at Porthos. He’s surprised to find his friend is watching him with dark, narrowed eyes. An unwelcome wave of anxiety swims through his gut. Has he finally crossed that invisible line? It wouldn’t surprise him. Bound to happen eventually.

Aramis swallows and lifts his eyebrows as lazily as he can manage. There’s nothing to worry about, he convinces himself. It’s a few tawdry words on a piece of paper - about a _woman_ no less - not his heart exposed in open view. Surely Porthos is merely irritated that his friend has put him in such a ridiculous position.

“Problem?” Aramis practically hums, rolling over to snag the wine bottle from between Porthos’ thighs. “It gets better, I assure you. She was _deliciously_ debauched for a noblewoman. Eager and… _athletic_ ,” he adds with a pointed smile. That announcement is followed by a hearty swig and the back of his fist swiped across his mouth, which means he doesn’t witness the shift in Porthos’ expression from searching to wistful. 

Porthos hides his eyes by dropping them to the papers in his hand and reaching up to tug off his bandana. His fingers thread through his curls, kneading into his scalp as if it will stop the headache that is already forming there. It won’t. There’s only one cure for that and it’s lounging in front of the fire yammering on about a past conquest.

 _Alright, maybe two cures_ , Porthos thinks as he leans forward to reclaim the wine, a small, forced laugh tagging along for the ride. Maybe if he gets blindingly drunk, his cock will stop reminding him that it’s been months since it received any _gratification_ of its own. Months with this smirking bastard beside him and an unrelenting need he dare not voice. Even if he weren’t overly attached to his _life_ (not that Aramis would announce his proclivity to the guard, but still), Porthos knows he can’t bear the loss of Aramis’ affection. Perhaps he wouldn’t shun him completely, but even the thought of Aramis telling Athos, or worse, treating him as a distant acquaintance…

It’s enough to terrify a man who doesn’t scare easily or hardly ever at all.

After a long pull from the bottle, Porthos slowly licks his lips and forces his gaze back to Aramis. Maybe it’s the numbing heat after a frigid week. Maybe it’s the wine on an otherwise empty stomach. Whatever it is, Aramis lets himself get caught staring openly at Porthos’ mouth, his own teeth unwittingly scraping across his bottom lip. When their eyes finally meet, they both freeze - Porthos with the bottle halfway to his mouth for another drink; Aramis with his thumbs halting in their descent behind his braces. 

As soldiers, they’ve both experienced moments like this before. Obviously of an entirely different context, but it’s eerily familiar nonetheless. It’s that heavy anticipation in the air that happens right before the first trigger is pulled, the first rapier drawn. That moment when things can still go either way. 

Then there’s a metamorphosis in Aramis’ face that not even the truly daft could have missed - from adrift to magnetic in a blink - and Porthos surprises them both by being the first to shatter the paralysis. He rolls forward to one knee, the wine bottle thumping against the floorboards as it lands on the opposite side of Aramis’ hips. Porthos grips it for leverage as he leans in, his breath catching in his throat as he parts his lips a whisper away from Aramis’ mouth.

But his courage abandons him. Up and flees for the first time since he was a frightened child wandering along dark alleys and he hovers there, panic welling in his chest and overbright eyes. 

Aramis saves him. As he’s wont to do. The sharp inhale that resulted from Porthos advancing on him is slowly exhaled and another breath quickly taken before he fists a hand into the leather at Porthos’ neck and pulls him to his hastily slanted lips. Porthos groans into his mouth, a jolting rumble of greedy need. The wine bottle is knocked over as he abandons his leverage. It’s for the best, though, since Aramis is riding him backwards to the floor and he would much rather wrap his arms around him.

That they’re a bit overzealous in those first few heated moments is understandable. Years of carefully built walls come crashing down to the symphony of breathless noises in the dark. Porthos rolls them too close to the fire with one hand buried in Aramis’ hair and they don’t even take notice of the danger. Aramis is too busy working at the fastenings of Porthos’ doublet. Porthos is too occupied dragging his teeth down the length of Aramis’ neck whilst grinding him into the floor.

It isn’t until Aramis has succeeded in shoving the doublet off of Porthos’ shoulders that the smell of something burning reaches through the lust-filled haze. Still, Porthos has his hand down the front of Aramis’s trousers so it’s a wonder either of them can think straight at all. Aramis pulls his mouth away with a distracted frown caught on the end of a strangled groan.

“ _Porthos_ ,” he hisses, though he thrusts forward into Porthos’ grip one last time and this naturally misleads his oblivious partner.

“ _Aramis_ ,” Porthos growls, dropping his head for another hot, open-mouthed kiss.

Aramis is half-sure he’s never been so torn in his life. And he’s _completely_ sure one word has never made him harder. But a sliver of concern still resides in his clouded mind and he pushes Porthos back at the shoulders.

“No, no. I mean, _yes_ , God yes, but _no_. That’s not what--something’s on fire, Porthos…. _Literally_ ,” he quickly amends with a helpless smirk before nudging that large body off of him. It's slightly awkward, what with Porthos needing to extract his hand and Aramis' eyes rolling back into his head in the process, but they manage. The two glance over at the source of the smell, and now some smoke as well, in unison. Both pairs of dark eyes widen as they spot the bedclothes and cushion that have apparently been kicked into the edge of the fire. 

It only takes a few seconds of scrambling to put out the small flames, but they’re still breathless when it’s done. Porthos rests back on his haunches and Aramis follows suit. A heartbeat later and silence gives way to raucous laughter. When he regains some semblance of dignity, Aramis rubs at the back of his neck and delivers a feverish glance across the short distance between them.

“Maybe we should--”

“Move this to the bed,” Porthos finishes. There’s no question in those words, or in the starved look on his face, for that matter. But there is a flicker of worry in his eyes as he shifts to his feet and holds out a hand to help Aramis rise.

Aramis responds to that look the only way he can. He grasps Porthos by the forearm and pulls himself forcefully into the man’s space, a broken brace dangling from his hip as he pushes in flush against him.

Aramis smiles, a deliciously slow stretch of his lips, and he lifts Porthos’ hand to murmur warmly against his palm.

“You read my mind.”


End file.
